They ate without conversation.
At last, sucking and spitting out the last bone, licking grease from his fingers, Bottle sighed and eyed the man opposite him. ‘I saw you go down, sir, under about a hundred Short-Tails.’
Ruthan raked his beard. ‘Aye.’
Bottle glanced away, tried again. ‘Figured you were dead.’
‘Couldn’t get through the armour, but I’m still a mass of bruises. Anyway, they pounded me into the ground for a while and then just, well, gave up.’ He grimaced. ‘Took me some time to dig free. By then, apart from the dead they were collecting, there was no sign of the Bonehunters, or our allies. The Khundryl looked finished – never saw so many dead horses. And the trenches had been overrun. The Letherii had delivered and taken some damage, but hard to guess the extent of either.’
‘I think I saw some of that,’ Bottle said.
‘I sniffed you out, though,’ the captain said, not meeting Bottle’s eyes.
‘How?’
‘I just did. You were barely there, but enough. So I pulled you free.’
‘And they just watched.’
‘Did they? Never noticed that.’ He wiped his hands on his thighs and rose. ‘Ready to walk then, soldier?’
‘I think so. Where are we going, sir?’
‘To find the ones still left.’
‘When was the battle?’
‘Four, five days ago, something like that.’
‘Sir, are you a Stormrider?’
‘A rogue wave?’
Bottle’s frown deepened.
‘Another joke,’ said Ruthan Gudd. ‘Let’s strip what’s on the travois – found you a sword, a few other things you might find useful.’
‘It was all a mistake, wasn’t it?’
The man shot him a look. ‘Everything is, soldier, sooner or later.’
Chaos foamed in a thrashing maelstrom far below. He stood close to the ledge, looking down. Off to his right the rock tilted, marking the end of the vaguely level base of the pinnacle, and at the far end the Spar, a gnarled thing of black stabbing upward like a giant finger, seemed to cast a penumbra of white mist from its ragged tip.
Eventually, he turned away, crossed the flat stretch, twelve paces to a sheer wall of rock, and to the mouth of a tunnel where shattered boulders had spilled out to the sides. He clambered over the nearest heap until he found a dusty oilskin cape jammed inside a crevasse. Tugging it aside, he reached down and withdrew a tattered satchel. It was so rotted the base began splitting at the seams and he scrambled quickly to flat ground before the contents spilled out.
Coins pattered, baubles struck and clattered. Two larger items, both wrapped in skins and each the length of a man’s forearm, struck the bedrock but made no sound. These objects were the only ones he collected, tucking one into his belt and unwrapping the other.
A sceptre of plain black wood, its ends capped in tarnished silver. He examined it for a moment, and then strode to the base of the Spar of Andii. Rummaging in the pouch at his hip, he withdrew a knotted clutch of horse hair, dropped it at his feet, and then with a broad sweeping motion used the sceptre to inscribe a circle above the black stone. Then he stepped back.
After a moment his breath caught and he half turned. When he spoke his tone was apologetic. ‘Ah, Mother, it’s old blood, I don’t deny it. Old and thin.’ He hesitated, and then said, ‘Tell Father I make no apologies for my choice – why should I? No matter. The two of us did the best I could.’ He grunted in humour. ‘And you might say the same thing.’
He turned back.
Darkness was knotting into something solid before him. He watched it for a time, saying nothing, although her presence was palpable, vast in the gloom behind him. ‘If he’d wanted blind obedience, he should have kept me chained. And you, Mother, you should have kept me a child for ever, there under your wing.’ He sighed, somewhat shakily. ‘We’re still here, but then, we did what you both wanted. We almost got them all. The one thing none of us expected was how it would change us.’ He glanced back again, momentarily. ‘And it has.’
Within the circle before him, the dark form opened crimson eyes. Hoofs cracked like iron axe-blades on the stone.
He grasped the apparition’s midnight mane and swung on to the beast’s back. ‘’Ware your child, Mother.’ He drew the horse round, walked it along the ledge a few strides and then back to the mouth of the tunnel. ‘I’ve been among them for so long now, what you gave me is the barest whisper in the back of my soul. You offered scant regard for humans, and now it’s all coming down. But I give you this.’ He swung the horse round. ‘Now it’s our turn. Your son opened the way. And as for his son, well, if he wants the Sceptre, he’ll have to come and take it.’
Ben Adaephon Delat tightened his grip on the horse’s mane. ‘You do your part, Mother. Let Father do his, if he’s of a mind to. But it comes down to us. So stand back. Shield your eyes, because I swear to you, we will blaze! When our backs are against the wall, Mother, you have no idea what we can do.’
He drove his heels into the horse’s flanks. The creature surged forward.
Now, sweet haunt, this could get a little hairy.
The horse reached the ledge. Then out, into the air. And down, plunging into the seething maelstrom.
The presence, breathing darkness, remained in the vast chamber for a time longer. The strewn scatter of coins and baubles glittered on the black stone.
Then came a tapping of a cane upon rock.
CHAPTER THREE
Time now to go out into the cold night
And that voice was chill enough
To awaken me to stillness
There were cries inviting me into the sky
But the ground held me fast –
Well that was long ago now
Yet in this bleak morning the wings
Are shadows hunched on my shoulders
And the stars feel closer than ever before
The time is soon, I fear, to set out in search
Of that voice, and I will draw to the verge
Time now to go out into the cold night
Spoken in so weary a tone
I can make nothing worthy from it
If dreams of flying are the last hope of freedom
I will pray for wings with my last breath
SMOKE HUNG IN THICK WREATHS IN THE CABIN. THE PORTHOLES WERE all open, shutters locked back, but the air did not stir and the sweltering heat lapped exposed flesh like a fevered tongue. Clearing her throat against a pervasive itchiness in her upper chest, Felash, Fourteenth Daughter of Queen Abrastal, tilted her head back on the soft, if soiled and damp, pillow.
Her handmaid set about refilling the pipe bowl.
‘Are you certain of the date?’ Felash asked.
‘Yes, Highness.’
‘Well, I suppose I should be excited. I made it to my fifteenth year, let the banners wave. Not that anything waves hereabouts.’ She closed her eyes for a moment, and then blinked them open again. ‘Was that a swell?’
‘I felt nothing, Highness.’
‘It’s the heat I don’t appreciate. It distracts. It whispers of mortality, yielding both despondency and a strange impatience. If I’m to die soon, I say, let’s just get on with it.’
‘Mild congestion, Highness.’
‘And the sore lower back?’
‘Lack of exercise.’
‘Dry throat?’
‘Allergies.’
‘All these aches everywhere?’
‘Highness,’ said the handmaid, ‘are there moments when all these symptoms simply vanish?’
‘Hmm. Orgasm. Or if I find myself, er, suddenly busy.’
The handmaid drew the water pipe to life and handed the princess the mouthpiece.